Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/85

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CHAP. II. § 38.
INTRODUCTION.
71

character as a grammarian, that Gaudus[1] and Corcyra[2] were among the scenes of Ulysses’ wandering, such an opinion being altogether in defiance of Homer’s statement, and his description of the places as situated in the exterior ocean.[p 1]

This criticism is just if we suppose the wandering to have never actually occurred, and to be merely the result of Homer’s imagination; but if it did take place, although in other regions, Apollodorus ought plainly to have stated which they were, and thus set right the mistake of Callimachus. Since, however, after such evidence as we have produced, we cannot believe the whole account to be a fiction, and since no other more likely places have as yet been named, we hold that the grammarian is absolved from blame.

38. Demetrius of Skepsis is also wrong, and, in fact, the cause of some of the mistakes of Apollodorus. He eagerly objects to the statement of Neanthes of Cyzicus, that the Argonauts, when they sailed to the Phasis,[p 2] founded at Cyzicus the temples of the Idæan Mother.[3] Though their voyage is attested both by Homer and other writers, he denies that Homer had any knowledge whatever of the departure of Jason to the Phasis. In so doing, he not only contradicts the very words of Homer, but even his own assertions. The poet informs us that Achilles, having ravaged Lesbos[p 3] and other districts, spared Lemnos[p 4] and the adjoining islands, on account of his relationship with Jason and his son Euneos,[4] who then had possession of the island. How should he know of a relationship, identity of race, or other connexion existing between Achilles and Jason, which, after all, was nothing else than that they were both Thessalians, one being of Iolcos,[5] the other of the Achæan Pthiotis,[6] and yet

  1. ↑ Gaudus, the little island of Gozo near Malta, supposed by Callimachus to have been the Isle of Calypso.
  2. ↑ It seems more probable that Callimachus intended the island of Corsura, now Pantalaria, a small island between Africa and Sicily.
  3. ↑ Cybele, so named because she had a temple on Mount Ida.
  4. ↑ Euneos was the eldest of the children which Hypsipele, daughter of Thoas, king of Lemnos, had by Jason during his stay in that island.
  5. ↑ A town situated at the bottom of the Pelasgic Gulf, hodie Volo.
  6. ↑ A country of Thessaly, which received its designation of Achæan, from the same sovereign who left his name to Achaia in Peloponnesus.
  1. ↑ The Atlantic.
  2. ↑ A river of Colchis, hodie Fasz or Rion.
  3. ↑ An island in the Ægæan, now Meteline.
  4. ↑ Hodie Lemno or Stalimene.
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